In the end, Sakayanagi Arisu never did manage to dig all the way to the root — to know what lay buried in Chris's past.
A brief farewell was exchanged. She watched his back as he walked away without a single glance over his shoulder, one hand lifted in an offhand wave — not even bothering to look back — and the girl quietly tapped the tip of her cane against the ground. A flicker of regret passed through her eyes.
But that was all.
In this world, whether you were working through a strategy game or working your way into someone's heart, it all came down to the same principle: patience, gradual progress, the slow simmer. Push too hard too fast, and all you'd earn was contempt.
Besides — if she actually managed to irritate him enough that he threw the whole arrangement out and walked away, she was the one who'd be losing out. That was simply a fact.
After all, once the second Black Sphere exam had wrapped up, she had swept her hand out and purchased ten full hours of Chris's personal time — fifty thousand points, paid upfront, no questions asked.
If that arrangement fell apart before she got anything out of it...
With Chris's particular brand of obnoxious logic — the kind that ran on 'I earned this money fair and square, so why exactly should I be providing services?' — she wasn't holding her breath for a refund.
"You really are a man with absolutely no sense of romance," Sakayanagi murmured, watching his retreating figure.
Yet even as she said it, the corner of her mouth curved — just barely — into something that resembled a smile.
Even if Chris conducted himself without the slightest warmth on the surface, his tongue sharp enough to draw blood — Sakayanagi had still caught something. Small details. The faintest traces hidden in the margins of his behavior.
For instance...
The seemingly offhand warning he'd let slip to Ichinose Honami earlier.
For instance...
The rather significant fact that Kamuro Masumi had managed to come through this exam without a single point in the negative.
That was right.
From the moment Sakayanagi had learned about the new mechanics introduced in this Black Sphere exam, she had deliberately moved to suppress Kamuro Masumi — making sure Kamuro had no opportunity to rack up kill points.
The purpose was simple: she needed to verify something.
In a game this ruthless, if a participant ended the round without dying — but had contributed nothing, and therefore landed in the negatives — what kind of judgment would the Black Sphere hand down?
It was a necessary experiment. And it was intelligence that would be indispensable for mapping out Class A's future.
She hadn't had a clear picture of exactly how the final hidden boss encounter had played out on the rooftop. But given Ryuuen Kakeru's ruthlessly self-interested nature, and Ichinose Honami's situation — her heart in the right place but her hands clearly overextended — neither of them would have gone out of their way to hand points to Kamuro Masumi, who had contributed absolutely nothing.
Which left exactly one variable.
Chris.
Take his final score — which had clearly overflowed well past what the standard Kabane kills could account for — and set it against Kamuro Masumi's, which had landed precisely at the bare minimum threshold to avoid the red.
Was he interested in Kamuro personally?
Was it the idle generosity of someone who simply had points to spare?
Or...
Had he seen through her? Seen exactly what she was doing — using Kamuro as a test subject — and chosen this particular method to let her know?
"If it's the last one..."
"You're a great deal more gentle than I'd given you credit for."
Sakayanagi Arisu let out a soft exhale, her lips slowly pressing together. Those pale cherry-pink lips curved, just slightly, into a quiet smile.
...
The following day.
The atmosphere inside Class 1-D's homeroom was distinctly off.
Most of the students were still riding the high of seeing those consumer points land in their accounts — but Hirata Yousuke, the emotional core of the class, sat with his brow furrowed tight, the shadows under his eyes a dark and unmistakable bruise.
Kushida Kikyo had barely stepped through the door — hadn't even made it back to her seat — when Hirata stopped her.
"Kushida. Hold on a second."
Hirata Yousuke kept his voice low, a note of urgency threading through it:
"I wanted to ask — do you have Horikita's contact info? I was looking for her for half of yesterday and couldn't find her anywhere..."
Once she understood why he was asking, Kushida Kikyo blinked — and tilted her head toward the back of the room, toward the seat that belonged to Horikita Suzune.
It was empty.
As the group admin of the Black Sphere Mutual Aid chat — and given how close she and Ichinose Honami had grown, practically best friends at this point — Kushida Kikyo knew exactly what had happened last night. Better than anyone else.
The trial had swept through the entire academic building. Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Hirata Yousuke had been pulled into it by accident.
She turned it over for a moment, then let a small apologetic look settle on her face.
"I'm sorry, Hirata-kun. Honestly, I'm not that close with Horikita either... you know how she is. Always been a lone wolf."
"I see..."
The disappointment on Hirata Yousuke's face was plain — bordering on deflated.
"Sorry for bothering you. I'll just wait until she shows up and ask her directly..."
"Actually —"
Just as Hirata was turning to leave, Kushida Kikyo's tone shifted.
"When it comes to the Black Sphere exam — you don't necessarily have to track down Horikita."
"You could always ask me~"
"Eh?"
Hirata Yousuke's head snapped up, his pupils shrinking: "Kushida, you know about...?"
Kushida Kikyo didn't make him wait.
She glanced left and right — confirming nobody was paying attention — then pulled out her phone and opened the Black Sphere Mutual Aid chat with practiced ease, holding the screen out to him.
"Actually... Chris-kun and I were the first people from our class to enter the Black Sphere trials."
"People who signed up before the general pool opened were designated by the Black Sphere as 'fixed members.'"
"I'm a bit of a special case, of course — a randomly-selected lucky winner."
"For the full ruleset, take a look at the group announcement."
Hirata Yousuke took the phone. His eyes moved quickly across the screen.
Without a doubt — compared to the hastily captured screenshots Amikura Mako had thrown together the day before, this information was far more thorough and organized. Scoring mechanics, equipment exchanges, the revival system, even a breakdown of monster weak points. Everything was there.
After a quick read-through, he finally understood the reason Horikita Suzune and Kushida Kikyo had chosen to stay quiet.
"Fixed members can't take up the exam slots reserved for the class — and there are always completely random mandatory participants on top of that..."
Hirata Yousuke handed the phone back.
"That kind of unpredictable selection system really would cause a panic."
He rubbed at the bridge of his nose and smiled bitterly:
"But times have changed. Now that the Black Sphere is starting to pull in completely unprepared students — students who had no idea this was coming — and moving the battlefield inside the school itself..."
"We no longer have any right to keep them in the dark."
"Everyone needs to know the truth — and everyone needs to be ready for it."
Watching Hirata sink into thought — clearly already working through how to get a class full of people whose main concern was their point balance to face a genuinely cruel reality — Kushida Kikyo's eyes shifted, just for a moment.
She spoke up, her voice gentle:
"Hirata-kun, if you want people to accept this quickly — pure fear won't be enough."
"Instead of hammering on how terrifying the monsters are and how real the threat of death is... it might help to show them what the Black Sphere exam can actually give us. What's in it for them."
"What do you mean?" Hirata looked up.
Kushida Kikyo raised one finger and smiled.
"Don't we have a joint PE class with Class B this afternoon?"
"From what I know, Ichinose-san from Class B — one of the original members — has already saved up enough points to exchange for equipment that can be taken out of the Black Sphere space."
"Maybe we could ask her for a little demonstration?"
"And as it happens, it sounds like she's been wrestling with this exact question herself lately."
"That really is a good idea." Hirata's eyes lit up. He immediately turned to Kushida and gave a deep, genuine bow. "Then let me say thank you on behalf of the whole class, Kushida!"
"You always come through when it matters."
"It's nothing — this is what I'm here for."
Kushida Kikyo accepted the gratitude gracefully, that perfectly polished smile never wavering for a single second.
"After all, we're all Class D together~"
...
"And that's the whole story! So I, having already opened my big mouth, had no choice but to come crawling to you for help, Ichinose!"
In the bend of a school corridor, Kushida Kikyo pressed her palms together in front of Ichinose Honami — her expression the very picture of desperate pleading, as if she had truly, personally worried herself to pieces on behalf of her entire class.
Ichinose, seeing this, quickly waved her hands.
"It's fine, Kushida-chan — this is something I wanted to do anyway. And besides... I actually have a few things about the Gantz Suit I'm not sure about myself. I was already thinking of asking Chris-kun for help."
"Since neither of us has any conflicting reasons, let's just sort it all out together."
"Really?! Thank you so much!"
Kushida Kikyo's face broke into a beaming smile. She grabbed Ichinose's arm and held on with both hands:
"Still — as expected of Ichinose! You managed to save up enough for the Gantz Suit that fast! What does it feel like? Is it amazing?"
Faced with the enthusiastic praise, Ichinose Honami's reaction wasn't quite what Kushida had expected.
For just a fraction of a second, something dark and complicated flickered behind her eyes.
But she buried it quickly — smoothed it away before Kushida could catch it — not wanting to worry her.
Ichinose Honami put her warm smile back in place:
"Mm! It's strong — really strong! When I put it on, I feel like I could out-sprint an Olympic champion!"
"Olympic champion..."
At those words, Kushida — who had been following Ichinose toward the locker room almost without thinking — felt her mind drift involuntarily back to that day in the equipment room. The profoundly inhuman thing she had witnessed Chris do.
She sighed.
"Ichinose... I think you might be setting the bar for human potential a little too high?"
"I definitely don't think anyone can lift a twenty-kilogram dumbbell with their pinky or just casually clear four or five meters in a single jump~"
Ichinose's step faltered.
She reached up and scratched her cheek, a little sheepish:
"Ahaha... is that so?"
"I wasn't really thinking about it that carefully — it just kind of slipped out... I suppose I'm still not fully used to the difference yet."
____
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